Raina Telgemeier

Raina Telgemeier (born May 26, 1977, San Francisco, California, U.S.) is an American author and illustrator of popular graphic memoirs and novels for young adults. Her protagonists are usually adolescent girls, and she typically portrays them going through everyday experiences, often drawn from her own life.

Telgemeier began to read comic strips when she was nine years old and started to draw comics shortly thereafter. Among her early influences were Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes (1985–95) and Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse (1979–2008). In 2002 she graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York City with a bachelor’s degree in illustration. (She later said her teachers were vexed by her “cartoony” style.) Her first job was in the design department of a book publishing company. During her spare time she continued to draw comics, some of which she sold on her website and at comic conventions.

In 2004 representatives from Scholastic Corporation gave Telgemeier the opportunity to create a graphic novel series from Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitter’s Club books. Telgemeier wrote four such graphic novels between 2004 and 2008.

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Telgemeier also began to develop her own comic series based on events from her childhood, which she posted in sections on the comics website Girlamatic. It was eventually published as the graphic novel Smile (2010). Smile tells the story of Telgemeier getting her two front teeth knocked out when she was in sixth grade. Smile was an instant success, appearing on The New York Times best-seller list. Telgemeier was credited with creating a new genre, the graphic memoir for young readers, and attracting many new readers, particularly young girls, to the form.

Telgemeier’s next graphic novel, Drama (2012), is a work of fiction about a group of students involved in a school’s theatre program and was loosely inspired by Telgemeier’s experiences in middle school but, unlike Smile, was not directly based on her life. Sisters was published in 2014. Another memoir, it centres on Telgemeier’s fraught relationship with her younger sister, Amara, and relates the time Telgemeier and her family took a road trip from their home in San Francisco to Colorado. Telgemeier returned to fiction in Ghosts (2016). The story follows two sisters, Catrina and Maya, the latter of whom has cystic fibrosis, as they navigate life and death in a new hometown. In 2019 Telgemeier published two additional books: Share Your Smile is an interactive book that includes activities and tips to help children create their own stories and illustrations; and Guts, another memoir, takes place before Smile and Sisters and explores Telgemeier’s childhood fears of getting sick, her resulting anxiety, and her sessions with a therapist to help her cope with her fears amid bullies and changing friendships in school.

About 18 million copies of Telgemeier’s books have been printed. She has won five Eisner Awards, annual awards presented at the San Diego Comic-Con for achievement in comics: Best Publication for a Teen Audience for Smile, Best Writer/Artist for Sisters and Guts, and Best Publication for Kids for Ghosts and Guts.